A common misconception among a lot of my customers here in the Portland area is that computer companies and the technicians never have problems, this will help correct that assumption.

Protocol16 runs a Small Business Server (SBS 2008) for our internal shop. It has everything that we need, all in one nice “little” package. Well, that nice little package can mean that if one bad thing happens, nothing works (rare, but possible). That was the case on today.

Last night, after I returned home from a family event, I decided to go ahead and install the latest Microsoft Updates. We don’t automatically install updates on the server since they can cause problems for a number of things. Well, last night, the updates installed, I allowed the server to restart and went to bed. The next morning, I fired up my email and got nothing, along with a “Disconnected” message in the bottom right corner of Outlook. To a lot of people, this is where they start picking up the phone. I had to turn around and log into the server, to which it promptly locked up. Oh, what fun…

A reboot later, I found the problem and corrected it. Another reboot and the server was up and running. Goes to show that we’re not impervious to problems ourselves.

On a side note, the problem was a simple one, but caused all kinds of problems on the server – everything was throwing errors, locking up, etc. I just might hobble our server when we start interviewing for our next technician to see how they perform in a real-world scenario… Again, we hire the best technicians, if a simple server problem like this throws them through a loop, they’re not going to make it with our customers either.

Hope everyone has a decent Black Friday. We found some really nice deals ourselves and will be passing the savings on to our customers later.
Justin

There are a lot of people in Portland that have asked about alternatives to Microsoft Office. While I personally like Office, I know it can be a burden to those that can’t afford the licensing costs. Even businesses have problems meeting the licensing costs.

Alternatives
Well, there’s the Open Source alternative called OpenOffice and then there’s Google Apps. Some companies report decent success using both OpenOffice and Google Apps. Personally, I would move to OpenOffice out of the two. I would rather have the documents on my computer than on the web. Perhaps I’m paranoid about security, due to my training and what I’ve seen.

Office Web Apps
Well, now there is another option for you all: Microsoft’s Office Web Apps. You can test drive them, in limited form, at Skydrive.live.com (you’ll need a Windows Live account though.)

I played with it on Sunday evening while I had some downtime at home and liked the little bit that I was able to play with. Excel, looked just like Excel, even though I’m on a Mac using Firefox… If you create a new file, after you log in, you can play around in said file, just like the real program. While playing around, I noticed that Word isn’t working, but Excel is. I didn’t attempt anything else.

According to Microsoft and other news reports, Office Web Apps will be free to users of Windows Live. So, when it’s fully released, it might be a viable alternative to the Office Applications that you install.

This release of free Web Applications may also drive the price of Office down, but only time will tell.
Justin

fw3j4vr2qi

We’ve been busy with new clients around Portland, but a lot of small business owners that I’ve personally talked to have wondered why a business should repair their computer vs having a family friend look at it for them.

Our quick answer is: there are sometimes people that are qualified to work on a business computer, but not always. If you know someone that is a “computer whiz”, make sure they understand your situation. If they come in and clean up your computer, they may accidentally uninstall a program, remove an important backup or just plain cause more problems.

Again, we don’t have problems with others working on computers, but make sure they’re qualified. Our technicians are certified by Microsoft to work on server environments (large, medium and small) as well as workstations and home desktops/laptops. We’ve seen small and large environments and understand those unique needs.

The other option you need to think about is experience. Our experience has taught us a lot of things that businesses specifically focus on. Someone that comes in that doesn’t understand the business can really end up costing more money in labor than Protocol16 would charge you. This is because we specifically understand the security requirements of the business environment. In this case, you could pay someone off the street to install windows on each computer and customize each one, or use Protocol16 to customize one computer to be “perfect” and mirror that to all the other computers (there are specifics to this, but we can generally do it).

One last thing you want to think about when bringing in an outsider that’s not associated with a company is insurance. Ensure that whoever you bring in is Licensed, Bonded and Insured. This protects both you and the person you bring in. What would happen if someone broke the company server and your email was down for a week?

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to call 503-524-9047 or email us on the Contact Us page. We’re here to help the Portland Metro areas.
Justin

Protocol16 services both residential and business customers for computer repair and services throughout Portland. One of the biggest things we see, on a normal basis, is that people are not backing up their data.

Why Backup
This may be old news, but the more people hear it, the more likely they are to do it. Backing up data can save your bacon in almost every way. Here are some examples:

• License keys – Backups allow you to retrieve license keys for software that you have installed. How many of you have a hard-copy backup of your license keys? We know we don’t have everything either. Cost can also be attributed here in case you can’t locate licenses for software you have installed – you may need to repurchase software.
   
• Pictures, documents, etc – family or product photos, documents containing works of art (if you’re a writer) or even customer invoices. Losing these can cause both heart ache and heavy losses, on the business side.
   
• Lost productivity – We don’t know about you, but when our computer isn’t working, we pace the room. Computers, these days, are everything. Losing a computer and not having a backup can cause days of lost productivity, even more if you’re a business. Businesses lose the productivity, the cost of the technician to reinstall everything (whether it’s Protocol16 or your own technician), the cost of the worker that is supposed to be using that computer running around everywhere else, etc. If your computer happens to be the billing/invoicing computer, then you can lose past invoices, current billable time, etc. Lots of money…

 

Types of Backups
Did you know there are actually several types of backups? They each do two different things and can help or hurt you, depending on the situation:

• Full – A complete set of all files you wish to back up. Think of this as your ‘reference set’. This helps since you have a full-on backup of your entire data set in one place. This hurts since it can take up a lot of space.
   
• Incremental – A backup of those files which have changed since the last backup of any type. This helps since you can spend less time to backup what has changed. This hurts because it can take more time to restore things, since you need to restore everything in order, it can also make digging for specific files a pain.
   
• Differential – A backup of those files which have changes since the last full backup. Similar to incremental, it picks the files that have changed, but with the express difference that it’s since the last full backup. This can help since it also takes less time to backup everything. This hurts because it can take longer to backup than incremental, can take up a little more space because it’ll backup more redundant type files, etc.

 

Locations
The backup location can make a huge difference as well. What happens if your business gets broken into or your house burns down? Those backups will most likely disappear as well. If you’re storing baby pictures or customer records, this can devistate you or your business. Here are the types of backups:

• On Site – This is where your backups are stored right next to your computer, or in the same building. This helps since they’re right there and you can do things quickly. This hurts in the above situation where your backups can disappear.
   
• Off Site – Your backups are stored at a physically different location. This can be at a neighbors house or even a business owner’s home. This helps since the backups won’t disappear, burn up or get stolen. This hurts since it can take hours, or days, to restore from an alternate location from across the internet. In some cases, your backups can be mailed directly to you as well.

 

Ways To Backup

• Automated – There are a few things out there that can automatically backup your computer for you. There are programs, mobile hard drives (with software added), web services (like Carbonite), and even network automated backups like the Apple Time Capsule and Western Digital’s MyBook. With the automated solutions, you can usually “set and forget”, up until you need something back.
   
• Manual – Manual backups can be a pain, but sometimes they’re needed. Automatic backups, while helpful, can backup a lot of information that doesn’t need to be included. If you’re a professional, a full backup should happen nightly or more often. But, in cases where you’re editing sensitive data (like an Accountant), you should backup the files manually to a different location as well.

 

Protocol16 Recommends
For consistency and easiness of backups, Protocol16 recommends an off Site, automated, differential backup with a local automated full backup solution in place as well. That’s right, Protocol16 recommends having two solutions. This allows you to ensure that, no matter what happens, you’ll always have a backup handy.

The automated local backup should be run at least once a week, for residential customers. For busineses, a minimum of once a day, usually a night. For business customers that rely upon databases and specific records on computers that need to be up to date and live all the time, this may need to change to multiple times a day.

The remote automated backup should be performed at least once a week, in either case. This assures that you have 2 layers of protection in case something happens.

Cost
Cost is an issue, we completely understand that aspect of anyone’s life. Cost for a local backup is usually $100 or less, for residential use. This is typically in the form of an external hard drive. At the moment, Protocol16 is testing backup solutions for customers, we’ll have a recommendation out shortly.

For businesses, this can be anything from a $100 consumer based item to a server that costs several thousand dollars. Please speak with us about solutions for your business. You might be surprised at what we can come up with.

Some clients ask, once in awhile, why they should use an on call service vs a drop off service, like the neighborhood computer shop. While I can’t tell you what to do, it mainly boils down to convenience, but both have pro’s and con’s.

Drop Off Services
Drop off services are typically in a smaller computer shop, although some of the larger stores have started to enter the market due to the growth of computers. Those shops are normally packed with all kinds of gear and can either be nice and clean or dingy with parts all over the place.

The “pro” comes in due to the amount of parts that these shops keep in inventory. They will most likely have nearly anything your computer will need right there. The “con” is, do you really need to spend all that time in traffic due to a bad fan or for a memory upgrade? There is a second con as well. A heck of a lot of these shops have drop off service, but they’ll charge you extra to fix it the same day. They’ll also charge you to diagnose problems and they can take 1 day to 2 weeks to fix your computer. Do your research to see what the reviews are for this company. Pay close attention to the negative reviews to see what the issues are.

In today’s world, the extra fees and waiting to get something fixed is unacceptable. Note: We do realize that there are companies out there that are much better than what is listed above… Always call to check on fees and work times before you take your computer to a shop.

Oh, and I need to mention that you’ve got to dig underneath your desk with all the wires and cob webs to get the computer out…

On Call
On call services offer a technician that can come out to your location when you need them, that’s a huge “pro” due to convenience. There isn’t a huge issue with calling a company out and letting their technicians dig under your desk for you to fix someting.

At the same time, in my opinion, these people are a little more adept at solving problems since they see how things work in the wild. Bringing a computer into a shop and saying “Word has X problem”, they’re typically not going to power it up and let you show them the problem. On call services would pretty much rely on you doing this so they watch exactly what happens. This can make the difference between saying “Word needed to be reinstalled” vs “Option X was on and there was a compatibility issue, but update Y fixed it for you”.

There is also the personal relationship that you develop with your technician. Many companies like specific technicians to work on their computers since that technician knows the people, the “attitude” of the computers (ie: workstation X always needs it’s CD rom drive cleaned out) and can setup a normal schedule to be there every Wednesday, if needed.

There are two cons to On Call services:

1. A lot, and I do mean A LOT, of “on call” computer services (especially those advertising on CraigsList) are some guy working out of his house illegally. This means he’s not licensed, bonded, insured, etc. That means, if he’s working on your computer and breaks it, he is personally financially responsible – same if he accidentally burns your house down due to that “cool case mod”. Good luck getting that money back. On top of that, since he’s not setup as a company, he’s not telling the IRS and the state about the income – he’s just taking cash income – that means no credit cards either. Do your research before calling someone over. If their website isn’t professional, I’d worry. If they’re hiding behind a random craigslist address, I’d worry. If they’re using their personal email address, I’d worry. If all of those things line up, you need to be up-front and direct and ask if they’re a full business and if they’re insured. Don’t accept “sure!”, you need the full business name, including the LLC, Inc, etc, as well as who they’re insured through. If they start with “uh….”, I’d think about hanging up the phone.
2. This isn’t nearly as bad as the first option. Due to riding around in a truck or car, the inventory, aka: parts, can be lacking. While on call services may stock parts at a central location or be able to get them on the way to the customer, very unique parts can be hard to come by. If a customer needs a laptop keyboard replaced, the likelihood of that keyboard being replaced quickly is slim due to  the large amount of keyboards out there. If there is a keyboard, the technician needs to hightail it back to the shop to pickup the keyboard, then back to the customer location – that could place the technician more than an hour out. A good company will tell you up front if they can’t fix your problem due to parts.

Those cons can be something some people just don’t want to deal with, but when the on call service costs the same, or less, than a drop off service, it’s MUCH more convenient to let them come to you. Do your research before calling any repair shop or person so you know the whole story.

As always, if you have any questions, we offer free advice at 503-524-9047.
Justin

I’ve seen this question posted on several websites as well as several blog posts. On top of this, I’ve also been asked this on a normal basis, especially since getting back to Portland and working on computer repair.

While Vista had it’s fair share of problems when it first came out, it’s perfectly acceptable for an Operating System now. After Service Pack 1 came out, Vista really started to shine. Now that XP is just over just under 8 years old, it’s time to let it go. Vista was the basis of Windows Server 2008 and, in the business world, that product is Rockin’. On top of that, SP2 has been released for Vista as well. Windows 7 is considered “Vista SP3″ and even Server 2008 R2 is using the Windows 7 code.

Some people are saying that you should wait until Windows 7 comes out – I’m one of them. Unfortunately, this has a downfall. There is no XP to Windows 7 upgrade. That means, if you don’t upgrade to Vista, you cannot upgrade to Windows 7, you’ll need to do a full install. Fortunately, Microsoft is offering a free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 at the moment.

“But Windows 7 Requires a Key Management Server!” (Minimum of 25 Vista Installations Req’d, only in a business environment)
Yes and no. Windows 7 can use your internet connection to activate, but when you have many computers reactivating and downloading Windows Updates, you’ll change your setup to point to a server to save bandwidth. This is standard practice in any environment that has a decent amount of computers.

In the end, only you can decide which way you should go. Personally, I would rather have a clean install of any operating system than an upgrade. There are too many odd things that can get carried around with a series of upgrades. A good spring cleaning is good once in awhile.

If you have any questions about Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, please don’t hesitate to call. I even personally have an MCITP (a big certification that Microsoft offers) for Server 2008.
Justin